Is our future pre-programmed? How this one video game predicted ISIS to the ‘T’

Often we hear people say things like “I saw this in a movie” or “ I played a video game just like that”, thus making comparisons to some things that are in fact happening in real life. In truth, such things are happening more and more frequently in many aspects of our lives. Although the movies that predict terrorist attacks years ahead usually go unnoticed – certain similarities simply cannot be left ignored.

Apart from the movies, there are also a few video games that predicted the rise of particular terrorist groups at least 10 years in advance. We are talking about ISIL, of course.

In the plot of the video game called “Command and Conquer” released over 15 years ago and narrated from the perspective of the current Atlanticist global order and before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, we find ourselves in a battlefield of the near future, where there are three main world powers – the US, China and an Islamist faction called GLA (Global Liberation Army) – Russia is absent among the three.

A particularly interesting thing, all these years later, is naturally the GLA, itself a sort of a global jihadist movement that slowly evolves into a high tech army, specialized in unconventional warfare which can’t be easily tracked or destroyed by conventional forces. The army of the GLA is moving from continent to continent, expanding its presence and infiltrating countries with a predominantly Muslim population.

Based on the in-game story, the army of the GLA captures Baghdad in 2013 and (coincidentally) begins expanding its presence to Yemen, Syria, Russia, Iran… and so on. Suddenly, it becomes a threat to the whole world and only two super powers can stop it – the US and China.

The future-telling background of the game is particularly evident in GLA’s strategy, tactics, weapons, where the similarity to ISIL is beyond imagination. Suicide attacks are nothing new to the history of mankind; examples are quite numerous, such as Kamikazes, Tamil Tigers and various Islamist groups.

One would, however, hardly imagine that suicide attacks would be used as the main strategic weapon in a battlefield on such a scale, making the Kamikazes look like a joke. At the time of the game’s release, such an idea was incoherent, and was historically unprecedented.

It is evident that with the GLA, the army uses suicide bombers as one of its main weapons – which can be used on a massive scale, such as the infantry, with explosive belts, or a truck which could be masked as APC, a civilian or an enemy copycat unit.

Who would have thought that thousands of such attacks would be staged within just one year of a Middle Eastern war? Probably no-one (except the ones who plan them).

Exploring the motorized units of the GLA, the most frequently used weapons are jeeps with machine guns at their backside, in some cases also equipped with anti tank rockets, all done in a fashion very similar to ISIL. The Marauder tank is even capable of stealing the destroyed parts of enemy armored vehicles and upgrading itself.

A similar thing happened recently in reality, after the massive looting of Syrian and Iraqi military stockpiles. The numerous types of armor and even upgraded guns could be seen on soviet models of the T-55, T-62 or T-72 battle tanks. This is done with great mastership, in the repair shops all over the ISIL controlled areas.

Attacking through a tunnel is another specialty of the GLA army, where its units are moving unexpectedly,just the same as ISIL. Infiltrating terror squads, which are attacking airports and highly secured areas, this can be seen not only in the game, but on the ground in the Middle East itself. These terror squads have evolved into such a sophisticated force that they conduct massive drone raids on army positions, while receiving little push back.

If we presume that this armed force, from the game, is carefully thought out and pre-planned, and over the course of the game reveals our future, we can assume that its creators were aware of some things, at least more than a decade earlier, before they became our everyday reality.

If we go back in history of US interventions, namely the Iraqi one, we can see that the backbone of this army is made of an oppressed population in the so-called Sunni triangle, which lost the war with the fall of Saddam Hussein.

It is therefore difficult to imagine that their initial fight against the American occupation will be reversed by master analytics in favor of US imperialism, and that these poor people will act in favor of the US and Israeli interests in the Middle East theater.

Yes, the engineering of the future is built up on many levels, because world politics and especially imperialism can no longer work in an old-fashioned colonial manner. Thus the politics based on post-colonial borders, economic pressure, cultural psy-ops warfare, are the creation of new movements which are more suitable to preserve the dominant role of the world order.

The one problem, as it pertains to the particular video game, is that its creators firmly believed in a future where Russia is no longer a leading superpower, something that proved to be highly miscalculated. Perhaps we should observe such signs more carefully, if we don’t want the future to surprise us.

Inessa Sinchougova is an Editor and Journalist at Fort Russ News, as well as a research fellow and translator of the Belgrade based think-tank, the Center for Syncretic Studies. She was educated at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand), in the field of Political Science and was previously employed in Marketing and Communications Strategy for a Multi-National Corporation. She runs a popular YouTube channel for translations of key Russian Foreign Policy figures and appears regularly on other alternative media channels. If you like her work, you can support her Patreon here.